What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle.Marvin Minsky
Each mental agent by itself can only do some simple thing that needs no mind or thought at all. Yet when we join these agents in societies - in certain very special ways - this leads to true intelligence.Marvin Minsky
In general we are least aware of what our minds do best.Marvin Minsky
We understand something when we can relate it to a familiar context that we already understand.Marvin Minsky
Once you perceive the problem of a city as a whole, you cannot leave it alone. You must also think about its parts. This is because our minds are not suited to understanding anything as a whole. We are only good at understanding things in pieces.Marvin Minsky
An idea, once it has taken hold, behaves much like an agent. It can block or suppress its rivals, or excite and stimulate its allies.Marvin Minsky
The more a teaching device resembles entertainment, the more it will attract infant minds. On the other hand, the more it demands hard work, the more it will repel them.Marvin Minsky
Pain seems to benefit from access to all of our resources for imagining things, remembering them, and thinking them out.Marvin Minsky
A self, like a city, is a huge mechanism in hundreds of parts. No person could hold it all in mind at once. Yet usually, some of the parts do get themselves together enough to give rise to a feeling of a single, central (or 'executive') self.Marvin Minsky
It's the empty spaces of the mind that make it seem so vast and fast.Marvin Minsky